Space Station based tethered interferometer for natural disaster monitoring

A synthetic aperture radar interferometer based on two vertically spaced physical antennas carried along parallel paths by the Space Station and by a small tethered subsatellite is presented. This remote sensing system is aimed at producing and updating topographic maps. In particular, it offers geometric, radiometric, and temporal resolutions adequate for natural-disaster monitoring. The system performance is identified by means of a computer simulation, taking account of the tethered platform dynamics and of the Space Station orbital decay. Numerical results show the capability of observing any point of the Earth surface in the range of latitudes ±51.6 deg with a repetitivity of about 2 days, by using range steering of the antenna beams (15-45 deg). Then, the attitude pointing accuracy requirements are derived by evaluating the signal-to-noise ratio and the swath overlap decrease due to the antenna misalignment (yaw 0.15 deg, pitch 0.10 deg, roll 0.20 deg).

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